The 2016 BMW 7 Series was the first car launched by the German group based on its new, revolutionary Cluster Architecture platform. Known beforehand as the ’35up’, CLAR allows BMW to use more lightweight materials than before on all of its new cars from the 3 Series model up, shaving valuable weight off of their hips. However, CLAR also facilitates the usage of new materials such as CFRP.
BMW’s production process for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer was developed by the Bavarians and was refined and improved so that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to manufacture. Its advantages are pretty much obvious; weighing a fraction of what traditional steel would while being considerably more resistant at the same time. The 7 Series was also the first production car to use it in its structure, apart from the i models that were built from the ground up using CFRP.
The Carbon Core technology can be easily seen at work in the video below that takes us behind the scenes and shows the world exactly how a 7 Series is put together. The video could very well be named ‘march of the robots’ as it does feature an impressive amount of automatic machines performing extremely precise movements over the course of the 20 minutes of footage.
However, it’s still up to the human factor to make the final decision regarding the quality of the work and the car overall. Furthermore, we can see human input along the way, checking in to see if everything’s on par, giving the final go ahead. No matter which side has more work to do on the assembly line though, the video is still pretty darn impressive, showing us in detail how a brand new BMW 7 Series comes to life and how CFRP is combined with aluminum along the way, for the perfect balance of the end product.
